Since we don’t live by politix alone (I sincerely hope), what did people get up to this weekend? Join in, share some tales, regulars and lurkers all!
Life, Culture and Politics from BrisVegas
Larvatus Prodeo was an Australian group blog which discussed politics, sociology, culture, life, religion and science from a left of centre perspective. more»
Finishing a weeks’ holiday, spent redecorating the verandah — a task that included a full day of being distracted by the 1959-vintage newspapers [Courier-Mail, Telegraph, Brisbane Truth and The Worker] that were under the old lino. All that needs doing now is to polish the floor.
Through the judicious use of matchstick blinds, the room now has a vaguely Eastern theme, apart from the old schooldesk from my Grade Four classroom that I bought last month for $60.
Wondering what happened to this year’s LP Christmas Drinks.
The day started with a 4 AM rise in order to get set up to film a time-lapse video of sunrise over Newcastle Beach. A beautiful sunrise, (including a pod of passing dolphins) but I was not real impressed with the result (poor composition, as I had miscalculated the bearing at which the sun would rise), so I may try again tomorrow, if the weather holds. (Yes my holidays have already started). Got a few nice still shots while I was at it: http://s60.photobucket.com/albums/h26/_RAAF_Stupot/Sunrise/
I have also recently been dabbling in the very geekish activity known as geocaching.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocaching
Today, I hid two very sneaky caches in the vicinity of Newcastle Ocean Baths, and found another one on the site of the old Burwood Colliery at Whitebridge. (Now a residential subdivision). Got quite sunburnt in the process.
Larvatus readers from Newcastle may know of the places I am talking about.
It’s actually been a very busy weekend, with the Melbourne Walk Against Warming yesterday, Where the Wild Things Are on Saturday night at the Westgarth (recommended), my open letter to climate sceptics this morning (including Martin Ferguson), and this afternoon friends we haven’t seen for quite a while dropping in for wine and lots of silly humour.
Went to the PYC markets c 7.00 am for the first time in two years. Most of the produce, jams & pickles, clothing, woodwork, even jewellery is locally grown or made, or comes from other semi/rural areas. Real (& really fresh) F & V that actually smells like what it’s supposed to be – rich tomatoes, home-grown herbs; lettuce so fresh the sap still oozes from the stem.
They started over 20 years ago as a pre-Xmas trash, treasure & produce, and people loved them. They hadn’t been going long when hail storms damaged much of the Granite Belt’s export fruit crops. After freezing, jamming & giving away all they could, someone suggested it was a pity to dump what was left when only the skins were marked. Several families trucked them in & sold them for $2 a big bucket – and sold out in a few hours. Suddenly F&V growers (inc hobby/back yard) had a market for good produce that didn’t meet Rocklea markets (Bris)or food processors’ standards … and most of the area’s residents have bought F&V there ever since.
Farmers, back-yard growers, hobbyists, anyone wanting to sell whatever, had rediscovered buying and selling as it was before post WW II supermarkets took over. And enterprise – which provided anything from a small additional income to “keeping one’s head above water” in hard rural times. Soon almost everyone in the district bought fruit, veg, jams, pickles etc from the markets at wholesale prices. Retailers tried to shut the markets down & the reaction scared local members into ensuring they continued
As the drought bit, enterprising farmers & wives dug out the cookbooks & dressmakers patterns, and furniture & toy making guides, and found they could make enough from the markets to survive. Many discovered that the markets gave them greater return than normal selling. Many made long trips (one does 800K a week) both to sell & to buy produce and materials for next time, taking in two or three different markets. Two decades (& continuing drought) later some have turned hobby/survival into large businesses, while others still turn up every week with their packed-with-fruit jams, homemade cakes etc. A generation of kids has grown up preparing for and serving customers at the markets, learning how to add up, give change, talk to customers – all great skills their grandparents’ generation learned.
About the same time the drought turned crippling, SE Asian refugees/ migrants (yep, boat people!) started small gardens & set up stalls; they’re great market people from way back, & just love to talk about their produce, how to cook them, the family & what they’re doing!. They were joined by bee-keepers, olive growers, nut growers & processors, wineries, back-yard & professional nursery people; specialist poultry dealers (chicks, hens; quails & guinea fowl (none of your battery-hen type) and so on.
Today – in Ian McFarlane’s ultra conservative city-base – almost pure lily white that first market day – Asians, Africans, Pacific Islanders mingle with earlier European migrants, the grandchildren of those who came early last century, and ordinary Aussies. I bought bottles of authentic home-made Indian pickles & chutneys; Vietnamese herbs and vegies; wonderful Granite Belt fruit with some skin markings from a devastating hail-storm a few weeks ago; Ironbark honey, rosella & fig jam, Wasabi macadamias; olives & olive oil. Next week I’ll add Xmas cakes, puddings etc. At one stall – probably run by a refugee/”fitting in” support group, a Sheikh, Africans, Pacific Islanders, SE Asians all worked together. Enterprising farmers beset by hard times, using traditional skills to stay self-sufficient; enterprising refugees, many of them boat people, risking savings and their lives for a better life!
Meanwhile, back on a lot of farms, whinging farmers (just as able to stay self-sufficient as those who do) want more and more taxpayer handouts. Meanwhile, more affluent “plane people” stay on after studying here, or merely overstay their visas, or simply wait and wait and wait.
Damned if I can see any real difference between enterprising farmers & ordinary people creating additional income streams, and enterprising migrant/refugee Boat People – ditto. Far as I’m concerned, both share the spirit that built the nation, fought at Gallipoli, Tobruk, Milne Bay, Kokoda, and keep it safe today volunteering for emergency services like SES & fire-fighters.
I think we, as a nation, have got some of our priorities very wrong!
I’ve just finished eating way too much kick-arse Rogan Josh (recipe taken straight out of Camellia Panjabi’s magnificent 50 Great Curries of India) and will doubtless be up with reflux all night. At the moment, I don’t much care. Still drooling.
Nice sunrise _RAAF_Stupot. Takes me back 30 years and more to when I fished the beach behind Stockton Hospital almost every morning throughout the winter. Light westerly winds, calm seas and fantastic golden sunrises cascading along the sand and water. Your mention of Burwood Colliery also stirs pleasant memories of winter mornings fishing Cross’s Beach at Dudley. Many thanks.
I turned 40!
Our planned dinner out last night had to be cancelled when the Twig threw up at 2pm. New plan: Indian takeaway from the wonderful Thousand Spices in Homebush. 5pm: Friend from Wollongong who is visiting friends nearby asks if she can drop in. Invite her for Indian takeaway as well. 6pm: The Geek rings people who are doing things at church, and finds out another friend is home and bored. Invites her for Indian takeaway. Had a lovely night in with my family and two good friends.
Today: husband announces my birthday to church. Tells ‘em that he suggested the first hymn be ‘Ancient of Days’, and that I would only agree if the second hymn was ‘Fight the Good Fight’… Lunch shouted by my Mum for me at a club on Botany Bay, where we utterly failed to win anything in the raffle. Had a swim with the kids in the late afternoon in the Bay. Dinner of leftover Indian.
So far, I like being 40!
Y’r just a chicken, Chookie.
Happy b/d to ya!
Is there going to be any LP Christmas drinks anywhere around the place this year?
Have I missed this grand announcement?
I greatly enjoyed meeting some of the contributors last year – including a friend from 36 years ago. What a surprise that was! He hasn’t taken up my suggestion that he could try and serialise his Phd thesis on Sodom and Gomorrohea as an occasional thread on LP! That might test his tickles.
But is there any drinkies to be had this year?
PS I’m glad LP has recovered from whatever it was that happened late this last week – for a few minutes there I thought that the LP crew had sold for a squillion and headed off into the sunset – to leave us wallowing in a tangled mass of blubbering thoughts and no way for us to hurl it into the ether.
Oh and today I slept a lot and thought a lot, when I was’t sleeping.
Did a bit of gardening on Saturday before going to my local (Peacock Hotel, Northcote) to see the Central Coast – Melbourne football match on the telly.
Then today had a lovely time at at Hanukkah party.
Mervyn and Terangeree – You’ve obviously been lucky enough to catch LP Christmas gatherings over East. I can’t recall any mention of one for sandgropers. It would be great to be able to put faces to some of the names I’ve come to know so well and I get the impression a few are out here in the west.
Any chance of meeting, however briefly, in Freo or even Perth? I’d happily brave the Freeway if anyone else is interested in a brief gathering. Having a wonderfully blank social calendar and no longer working I am open to suggestions re a time. Good places to drink al fresco and even BYO are easy to find here.
Happy birthday, Chookie.
Usual quiet weekend. Apart from when I was on-line spent most of it taking notes on the siege of Boston, 1775-75 from Commager and Morris’s The Spirit of “seventy-Six, a wonderful and extensive collection of primary source documents. tried out my new stockpot. very rich chicken & vegetable soup, lots of tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and potatoes, some carrots, a dash of Worcester sauce. Usual Saturday night TV fare.
Sunday, stockpot still going. Ditto as for Saturday. Watched The History of Scotland. Seems its started a minor history war : http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/120651.html . Then the excellent John Adams. And now I’m here.
Busy weekend after hectic week involving my soon-to-be-81 diabetic mother-in-law having a nasty fall last Monday at Tailem Bend after an early Christmas bbq with brother-in-law who will be laid up over Christmas and can’t come down to us. Fall resulted in a rotten gash on her upper arm which bled profusely (blood thinning meds), a huge egg on her forehead and bark off her knee.
A visit to the hospital confirmed that she was OK, but bruising and soreness continued to manifest itself all week.
Rush trip to Adelaide on Thursday to take the 2 youngest to shop-till-they-dropped Christmas shopping. Left at 6.00am and got back home at midnight. Buggered!
Friday night, visit from the daughter and 2 of her scaly mates who stayed at my house in Robe and from my cousin, who recently had a lung removed and her middle daughter who are heading back to Tassie to live.
Saturday morning had a nice couple of hours with her before palming off some vegie lasagne on them as they wended their way to Port Fairy for a one night stay before hitting Melbourne and the ferry to Tassie.
Then off to lunch at a friends’. Home, absolutely knackered by 10.30pm and read my newly acquired book “Catching Fire. How Cooking Made Us Human, by Richard Wrangham until 1.30am.
As a consequence slept in and didn’t water my garden, but I did finish the book and am waiting to fall on the rest of the pile from Imprints. Watering tomorrow without fail. My tomatoes are tomatoing and the beans are beaning.
Happy birthday Chookie!
David Irving (NR), Chookie (Happy B’day for yesterday), other curry lovers. Will let you know about the new home-made market chutneys & pickles after I’ve sampled more than a taste. It has a web-site http://www.mudgeeraba.com.au
Jane, what’s “watering the garden” like? I’ve forgotten.
My One True being away in Australia I worked diligently at inaugral indexing project, interspersed with bouts of ST:TNG accompanied by Mr Wheaton’s droll audio commentary.
Also poked sticks at people on teh interwebs.
Happy birthday, Chookie!
. . .
Paul Burns — my secret(s) for a good chicken soup are: diced celery early on and then more celery later; a splash of white wine at critical moments; ditto a bit of olive oil and sesame oil, provided you time them right; more onions than you thought you needed (Spanish onions only, please); and the juice of a whole lime — squeeze in half early on, and the other half later. Scallions and jalapenos are optional. (I have two other secrets which sadly are too complicated to explain.) Recently in Portland OR I had a chicken/potato/pepper soup derived from a Mexican source that was the last word. Except for the old Kiev and Veselka on glorious Second Avenue.
“I am ashamed of my century
for being so entertaining
but I have to smile”
– Frank O’Hara
I nearly died!
Literally.
I was bitten by an ant of all things on Saturday and went into what the doctors call “Anaphylactic shock”.
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t stand up for fear of passing out, was shaking uncontrollably and broke out in a whole body rash.
Fortunately I called an ambulance and spent the weekend in emergency being pumped full of adrenalin and oxygen.
Otherwise there would’ve been a fairly good chance that I would’ve snuffed it.
And here I was planning a quiet weekend with a glass or two of red and a DVD!!
Thanks, very much, j-p-z. Sounds utterly scrumptious. Will try it.
@reb of Gutter Trash,
That level of drama seems rather uncalled for!
Glad to hear that you’re in recovery mode now. Did they talk to you about carrying an epipen around? A friend of mine who has an anaphylactic reaction to peanuts needs to do this. It’s saved his life a few times now.
Hi tigtog,
Thanks for the good wishes.
Yes, I have an appointment with my GP this afternoon to pick up the epipen.
It will be a whole lot of fun having to carry that around… not.
The whole experience seems a bit surreal now. One minute happily pottering about in the garden, the next, on the brink of the abyss!
Gosh reb, that sounds much less fun than my weekend. Hope you are completely over the reaction now.
Thanks to all for the birthday wishes. I had a large slow cooker handed down to me this weekend and am following the recipes with interest. Have made borshch successfully in my smaller crockpot, but need to consider the process before I’m happy to give you a recipe. Can’t find a way to add the link here, but if you search usenet for “chookie borshch” you should pick up my stovetop recipe in aus.food. Suitable for vegetarians/vegans if you don’t add sour cream.
DeeCee @15, you have to live in the sticks and have a bore.
reb, there’s only one solution, drink more red and avoid the garden like the plague! Gardens are dangerous things. Lucky you were able to ring the amubulance pronto. Do you have to have tests to determine whether you’re allergic to other insect venoms?
My eldest son had a similar experience after a bee sting at school. He had to be carted off to hospital and spent 2 days having adrenalin pumped into him.
I hope you’re feeling back to normal after that awful experience. Death to all ants, I say. The only good ant is a dead ant!